-
Title
-
Development As Breaking Away and Opening Up: A Challenge to Vygotsky and Piaget
-
Abstract/Description
-
Recent work based on dialectics and the cultural-historical theory of activity points toward three major challenges to the developmental theories of both Vygotsky and Piaget: (1) instead of just benign achievement of mastery, development may be viewed as partially destructive rejection of the old; (2) instead of just individual transformation, development may be viewed as collective transformation; (3) instead of just vertical movement across levels, development may be viewed as horizontal movement across borders.
In this paper, I will examine each of the three challenges, using Peter Høeg's autobiographical novel Borderliners (Høeg, 1994) as an appropriate case to concretize and illuminate the challenges. I will suggest three theoretical concepts - contradiction, zone, and mediation - as potential tools for mastering the three challenges. I will discuss the place and meaning of these concepts as resources embedded in Vygotsky' and Piaget's theories.
I will conclude by questioning the explanatory potential of developmental theory in the face of transformations such as the ones described by Høeg.
The question is, indeed: Does development explain anything significant happening outside the developmental psychologist's carefully chosen and
constrained "natural" settings?
-
Date
-
1996
-
In publication
-
Swiss Journal of Psychology
-
Volume
-
55
-
Pages
-
126-132
-
Medium
-
en
Print
-
Background/context type
-
en
Conceptual
-
Open access/free-text available
-
en
Yes
-
Peer reviewed
-
en
Yes
-
ISSN
-
1421-0185
-
Citation
-
Engestrom, Y. (1996). Development As Breaking Away and Opening Up: A Challenge to Vygotsky and Piaget. Swiss Journal of Psychology, 55, 126–132.
Comments
No comment yet! Be the first to add one!